Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise and speak in the House, but I am disappointed that we are on week three of speaking about parliamentary privilege.
Those who are watching at home want to know why we are here and how we got here. It all started with Sustainable Development Technology Canada. This is a fund that was designed to support initiatives for green technology, emissions reduction and things like that. The fund started in 2001, and under Liberal and Conservative governments, it went along just fine until this corrupt bunch of Liberals got involved.
Cabinet ministers decided to give a billion dollars to the fund. They picked their friends to be on the committee to decide who was going to get the money, and the friends gave the money to their own businesses. The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest; 80% of the projects had conflicts of interest, and there was a whistle-blower within the Sustainable Development Technology Canada department who said that there was criminal activity involved.
As such, as parliamentarians, we wanted to look into the matter. The documents related to this fund were requested in June, but the government, the Liberals, did what they normally do: They delayed. Then, when they sent the documents, they blacked out all the useful parts. The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle stood up on a question of privilege because it is our right, as parliamentarians, to get whatever documents we need to do our good work. The Speaker absolutely correctly ruled that, yes, this was a violation of our privilege, and he ordered the Liberals to deliver the unredacted documents so that we can turn them over to the RCMP.
We have been waiting for three weeks and debating this matter of privilege every day. No documents have been delivered. That is why we are here.
I am going to spend my time today talking and pushing back against the Liberals' very weak arguments about why they cannot bring the documents forward. I will start with one of the myths they are spreading. They say that they cannot produce the papers, because giving them to the RCMP would violate the charter rights of Canadians. This is not true at all. The police and the RCMP get tips all the time: They get tips from Crime Stoppers, as well as phone calls and documents alleging criminal activity.
The law says that the RCMP must do due diligence by looking at the evidence presented. If they find evidence of criminality, then they have to go to the court and order those documents through the court in order for them to be used at a trial. That is the law, so it is ridiculous to suggest that the government cannot produce the papers for that reason.
The other thing I would say is that it is very hypocritical of the Liberals to say that they are concerned about the charter rights of Canadians. They have violated nearly every charter right. They are what their record says they are, so let us look at their record.
First, let us start with freedom of expression. There is Bill C-11, the censorship bill, by which the government-appointed CRTC can take down an individual's content if it finds the content objectionable. Let us also talk about Bill C-63, which is the online harms bill. It would put someone in jail for life if the government thought that person might commit a hate crime in the future. That is utterly chill on freedom of expression.
Let us talk about freedom of religion. There are people crying “death to Jews” from coast to coast to coast. The government has done nothing to stem the flow of vandalism and harassment that is happening at synagogues and at Jewish businesses in our country. The Hindus are being persecuted by the Khalistanis; again, the government has done nothing. There are 112 Christian churches that have burned. The government has said nothing. Therefore, there is no protection for freedom of religion from the Liberal government.
If we want to go down the list of other freedoms, let us talk about mobility rights. Every Canadian has the right to freely enter and leave Canada. That is in the Charter of Rights. However, during the pandemic, Liberals trapped four million people in the country for over two years, even after it was medically proven that people who were vaccinated could get and transmit COVID in the same way as the unvaccinated. Therefore, 90% of vaccinated people were allowed to go wherever they wanted, to leave and enter Canada. However, 10% of people, who were not a higher risk, were trapped in the country. This separated them from their families and caused a lot of trauma.
Then we get to the Emergencies Act, which was ruled by the courts to be illegal. I am not sure why there were no consequences for that. If I were convicted of something, I could appeal, but I would have to appeal from prison; therefore, I am not sure why there has been no action on that. However, Liberals froze people's bank accounts. That is unlawful search and seizure, so they violated another charter right.
When it comes to freedom from discrimination, people are not supposed to discriminate against anybody based on race, religion, age, etc., but we have seen that the Liberals do. The Canada summer jobs program discriminated against people of faith who would not sign the attestation. Moreover, the Liberals discriminated based on age when they decided to give an increase in OAS to people over 75, but not those between 65 and 74.
